Florida Officials: Health Reforms Would Be Costly

November 3, 2009|Posted by William Gibson on November 3, 2009 01:20 PM

By Josh Hafenbrack Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE ? Federal health care overhaul proposals in Congress could add between 1.4 million and 1.69 million people to the state?s Medicaid rolls and cost state taxpayers more than $600 million annually by 2015, state officials said in a report released today.

The health-care proposals in the U.S. Senate and House would expand eligibility for Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care for poor and disabled, but it comes with a cost.

Under the Senate plan, Florida?s Medicaid rolls would grow from about 2.7 million to 4 million people by 2015, according to a report by the state Agency for Health Care Administration. The total cost would be $4.2 billion ? with the state picking up $608 million of that, the report said. The federal government would pay for the rest.

Florida?s costs for the Medicaid expansion would rise even more after that under the Senate plan -- to $819 million by 2019, the report calculates.

The figures are being presented this afternoon in Tallahassee, where legislators are gathered for committee hearings on the budget. Medcaid accounts for about one-quarter of state spending. And even without the federal change to Medicaid eligibility, state lawmakers will have to find another $1.6 billion in next year?s budget just to keep current programs running.

The House health-care plan would cost the state even more, the ACHA report says. Under that plan, enrollment would mushroom by 1.69 million by 2015, costing $7.4 billion overall. The state would have to pay $1 billion of that total, with the federal government picking up the rest.